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Talkbeds, Part I: Information Programming
It's not uncommon for radio stations to run recorded weather updates, news headlines sports "shorts," PSAs, business briefs, traffic updates, and other "shortie" programming commonly lasting a minute or less. These little reportlets can be presented "cold," with no music beneath them, or "produced," with an instrumental background, depending on the style and taste of the station. But if the truth be known, there are many cases where no instrumental background is used, not for reasons of format, but because adding talkbed music is an extra step that increases the staff work load.
That's where AutoCast's TalkBed feature comes in. TalkBed allows you to put music beneath any or all of your forecasts, headlines, ski reports, market summaries, etc., without adding production time. The announcer just records the report to a file and places it into the system. AutoCast automatically notes the length of the file and chooses the correct music to play under it, ducking the volume of the instrumental by a specified amount so it complements the report without drowning it out. As the report ends, AutoCast segues out of the music, essentially producing your music-backed report on-the-fly as it is being broadcast.
One of the cool things about AutoCast's TalkBed feature is that, while you may wish to always use the exact same instrumental beneath a certain report, and formatically it might be wise to do so, you're not limited to that. You can set up a rotating group of background tracks for that type of report. If you wanted to, you could rotate through dozens of tracks...hundreds of tracks, by simply marking all the audio files' Comment field with a word you've associated with that type of report (a task that can take just seconds in Army Knife using the Edit option.)
Note that each type of report can be given its own rotating group of music beds, and there is no limit as to the number of kinds of reports, or associated instrumentals.
Note also that there are some free instrumentals that come with the TuneTracker System, in the SoundDogs sampler found inside your TuneTracker System folder, and they have already been labeled according to possible uses. You can use them with your reports by marking their Comment field with the wording of your choice.